


Til' The Roses Rot

by Qpenguin98



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: ADHD, Amnesty, Anxiety, Cooking, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medication, Parent Death, TAZ Amnesty, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, just mentioned, this takes place relatively in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 12:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17560475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: Aubrey Little loves being at Amnesty Lodge.The only major problem in Kepler, for her at least, is that she’s been rationing her meds and they’re almost gone.





	Til' The Roses Rot

Aubrey Little loves being at Amnesty Lodge. She has friends and a purpose and a solid home, something she hasn’t had for a few years. Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD is happy, and more people seem to appreciate him than ever before. She has  _ actual magic _ that she’s learning how to use and she fights monsters, which is less fun than she’d anticipated but still kicks total ass.

The only major problem in Kepler, for her at least, is that she’s been rationing her meds and they’re almost gone. She takes them on really bad days and tries her best on days she thinks she can go without. It’s messing with her head a little bit, the constant on and off of the medication. More and more days are getting to be really bad days, but she’s starting pushing off taking them until really really bad days. She doesn’t want to fill her prescription, though she knows how easy it is to call and have them switch it over.

If she calls and picks them up, then her dad will know where she is. She’s still on his insurance, after all. It would probably be good for him to know where she is, all things considered. He’s a good dad, and she loves him a lot, but things are so dangerous here and she doesn’t want to put him in any danger in case he decided to come see her. And he might want her to come back. She couldn’t make herself go back then and she definitely can’t now.

She’s so foggy recently, though. It kinda sucks. She’s tired and unfocused and a little disoriented. She’s been doing a lot of little things around the Lodge to try and combat it, but it’s getting harder and harder to ignore. She knows it’s because of how little she’s been taking her medications that it’s like this, that she’s getting crashes by not taking her shit regularly, but she doesn’t really have a choice! She’d just like there not to be a cost for making this frankly responsible decision.

Stupid off brand Focalin and its stupid withdrawal side effects.

Aubrey and Dani end up talking a lot, which isn’t a downside. She’s still a little too nervous to ask her on an actual date, but Aubrey’s thinking that her feelings aren’t exactly unrequited and she might have a chance. She just needs to get herself a little more together before she makes any hard moves towards romancing her.

She keeps doing a lot of petty magic, both to give herself something to do with her hands and to impress Dani. She pulls cards out of nowhere and does that cool floating shuffle that she learned forever ago, and grabs coins from behind people’s ears, and makes things disappear and reappear as she pleases.

“How’d you learn all this stuff?” Dani asks after Aubrey pulls her card from the middle of the deck.

“My parents got me one of those toy magic kits and I got way too invested,” she says, reshuffling her cards. “And then they realized I was actually into it in a not temporary kid way and I got to do magic lessons from the resident best magician in the city.”

“Can you show me how?” Dani asks, leaning forward to squint at the deck of cards.

“Not unless you want to be a magician!” Aubrey says cheerfully. Her hands keep moving, flipping the cards from one hand to the other. “That’d put me and a bunch of other people out of a job. I can tell you some magic trivia, though.”

She smiles and nods and Aubrey’s stomach does a bit of a flip at that. She prattles off information about Houdini and the guy he got his name from and magician’s groups in the States that work together to oust fraudulent magicians.

“In this real specific place in Australia you’re not allowed to own a rabbit unless you can prove to the city that you’re a magician, which is really a lot of pressure when you think about it. You’ve gotta get the trick you do perfect to keep your pet? Rude.”

Her hands are getting a little sloppy, but getting a different magic thing means getting up and leaving, so she’ll stick with the cards. Dani still looks interested, which is a relief, really, because Aubrey feels like she’s been talking for years.

“And! This man did the sawing a woman in half with his wife on live television and the show cut off right after he cut her in half and everyone thought they had just watched this guy kill his wife when the show had just run out of—”

Her hand falters and all the cards go flying all over the floor in the world’s worst rendition of fifty two card pick up.

“Time,” she finishes, staring at a big group of cards on the ground.

“Oh crap,” Dani says, scrambling to help pick them up. Only Aubrey's just kind of sitting there, staring at her hands and the cards. She should be helping, should be on the floor right next to Dani, laughing it off and collecting her cards, but she can't make herself move. She never drops cards, she never slips up, and she never sends them spilling all over the floor like this. Her hands look a little shaky, and that’s— that’s new.

“Aubrey?” She refocuses on Dani, a hand on her knee, looking up at her, brows furrowed. “You okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, just, yeah.” She couldn’t stop talking a minute ago and now words are unreasonably hard for now reason whatsoever. She twists her lips and squeezes her eyes shut for a second before slipping off the couch and onto the floor next to her. “Sorry. I’m good.”

She doesn’t look at her, but she knows Dani’s watching her, making sure she’s alright. It makes her feel prickly and jittery and stared at, but she shoves that down and gathers her cards.

It’s not like things really get better. Because she is still taking her meds on days where it’s too hard to sit still long enough to clear out the fog in her head and make a coherent sentence. And people are noticing, which isn’t great. She doesn’t want the attention and she doesn’t want to have to explain herself. She’s trying, and that should be enough, but her body betrays her every time and she’s left an over-focused under-motivated jumpy kid that either can’t keep her mouth shut or doesn’t talk for hours. There’s only so many card tricks she can do to keep her hands occupied, and after throwing them all over the lounge room she’s not really all that eager to mess around with her cards.

Aubrey establishes herself in the kitchen, and while she’s not too great at the cooking aspect, she’s excellent at chopping things up and stirring. Barclay puts her on slicing duty a lot, dicing up potatoes and tomatoes and carrots for lunches and dinners. She’s been sleeping in a lot lately so breakfasts are touch and go for whether she can help.

She’s decent at mixing things together, but her specialty is in the prep work. It gives her something to do and it’s monotonous and easy enough that she doesn’t need to focus too hard.

“You wanna help make some bread?” Barclay asks her one day.

“Real bread or sweet bread?”

“Cranberry.”

“Sweet bread,” she says decisively as she hops up from her spot on the couch. “You got some stuff for me to chop?”

“A whole buncha cranberries?” he offers, and Aubrey grins.

“Sign me up!”

There’s three bags of cranberries to cut up. Barclay always does massive batches for all the residents at the Lodge, and this time is no exception. She grabs the paring knife from the drawer and sets to work, dumping the finished cranberries in the bowl next to her.

This should take a long time, and the first part seems like it lasts forever. Barclay’s chattering on and it’s so hard to keep focused on the words coming out his mouth when she’s trying to cut up cranberries. She’s not even halfway through the first bag. How is she supposed to finish three?

“So,” Barclay says, measuring out flour into a massive bowl. “How’re you doing?”

“Fine? These cranberries kinda suck, if I’m being honest, but they’re not the worst thing I could be cutting up.”

“You just seem a little…” he doesn’t finish, leaving it like that, and Aubrey tenses. She knows what she seems like, and she knows other people see it, but she’s just been ignoring that fact.

“A lot?” she offers. “Bouncy? Distracted? Way too into things?”

“I wouldn’t use all of those,” he says, looking at her and frowing. “And if you already know what I’m talking about, are you sure everything’s alright?”

“I feel like if I know that just makes it more plausible that things are good. And they are. I’m fine. Just… all those things I listed right now. It’s okay, really. It’s just how my ADHD is.”

“I mean, I know, I know you’ve got it but it’s never seemed this… bad? Is that the wrong word?”

Barclay seems intent on being as gentle about this as he possibly can, which Aubrey honestly appreciates, but she’s fed up dancing around the topic.

“Just— yeah, bad is fine. It’s bad because my meds are acting kinda fucked right now, alright? I’m dealing with it. It’s fine. If you ever want me to shut up, just tell me, okay? You don’t gotta jump through hoops and niceties just to get me to stop talking.”

“I wasn’t.” He stops measuring things and turns to look at her fully. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye but keeps on slicing cranberries. She feels like an asshole. Barclay doesn’t deserve her snapping at him like this. He’s only ever been a pretty big source of support through everything and here she is, yelling at him for a thing that’s her fucking problem.

“Aubrey,” he says, and it’s a little firm so she puts the knife down, staring at the cranberries under her and what little juice they’ve let out. She still doesn’t look at him. “I wasn’t trying to do that. I wouldn’t. You can take up whatever space here that you want. I’m just checking that you’re okay.”

“I know,” she says, because he’d never do that kind of thing. Her eyes feel traitorously damp and she shoves all her feelings down as far as she can, which isn’t all that far. “I know I’m— I’m sorry. It’s not that. I’m just figuring some stuff out right now and it’s involving my medication so it’s screwing stuff up pretty badly.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” He’s so good, Barclay’s so good, but he’d get too worried for all the wrong reasons, and Aubrey doesn’t need that.

“Can we just make the bread instead?”

He’s quiet for a moment before answering. “Of course,” he says eventually. He grabs another knife from the drawer and steps up next to her. “Do you want some help?”

“Yeah,” she says, looking to the side and blinking a couple times to clear her eyes. “Thanks.”

It goes faster with two people, which is kind of obvious, but recently she’s just been so able to get into chopping that it didn’t even matter that she was the only one doing it. Not today, she guesses.

But it’s okay, because talking to someone while making stuff is better.

They talk about the Lodge and she indulges in the gossip about the aliens that live there and Barclay tries and only partly fails to get information on her and Dani. She’s an okay secret keeper, but she’s been a little anxious to talk about her with someone. Barclay’s good at listening, and she doesn’t spill all her romantic beans, but she at least tells him that she thinks Dani’s cute and that maybe in the future when things aren't so hectic and she isn’t such a mess, she’d want to take her on a date.

“I mean, things aren't gonna get all that less hectic. There’s still gonna be abominations. But maybe once you get your personal stuff sorted out you try it?”

“Maybe,” she says, chopping her last few cranberries. “Alright! Time for the fun part.”

“What, watching me make it all while you don’t do anything from the sidelines?”

“Obviously. You know I can’t make anything decent in the kitchen, Barks.”

“…Barks?” He gives her a pretty incredulous look. She gives him a grin.

“Uh, yeah, Barks. Barclay? Barks? It’s the obvious nickname.”

“I guess?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Dunno that I’ve heard it before, Aub.”

It’s just shy of the nickname her parents used to call her, and she freezes a little bit. Barclay notices and frowns.

“Is that not okay? I’m sorry if I—”

“No!” she blurts out, effectively cutting him off. “No it’s fine. My, uh, my parents used to call me Orb and it was just close is all. It’s okay. I mean, it’s only fair for you to come up with a nickname after I called you  _ Barks _ .”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. You think I let people call me things I don’t want? You’re super okay.”

He nods and she lets herself relax. The tense moment is over, thank god, and Barclay’s headed back to mixing.

“You sure you don’t wanna learn?”

“You know I’ll burn it even if I don’t touch the oven!”

She doesn’t touch anything else and the cranberry bread comes out perfectly after Barclay cooks a million mini loaf tins in the oven. She grabs her own and munches on it whole, not bothering to slice it.

Aubrey kind of hates how much she’s been thinking of her dad recently. He’s not even a bad dad, even if he didn’t want her to go and waste her life on magic. Jokes on him because she’s literally magic and it’s mom’s fault.

He probably deserves to know where she is, especially since they haven’t talked in almost two years. That’s both of their faults. She stopped answering and he stopped calling. But she doesn’t want him to know where she is permanently. It would be dangerous for him and for her and for everyone at the Lodge.

She’d kill for her brain to stop fuzzing up so much.

It’s such an easy fix, but with the way she left after mom and did her best to leave everything behind and never think about it again, it’s a massive risk. Maybe he’s tired of being estranged, maybe he wants to talk about mom, maybe he knows stuff about the magic and the pendant and why she had to go and fuck it all up so badly—

“Aubrey?”

She jerks at Duck’s voice, notices his hand gently nudging her on the shoulder. She looks up at him, crouched down just above her, and raises a questioning eyebrow.

“Yeah?”

“You were just kinda staring off there for a while, thought I’d check on you but you weren’t really respondin’.”

“Well that’s not great,” she says, shaking her head a few times to try and clear it. It doesn’t really do anything but make her dizzy. Duck sits down on the couch next to her, gives her enough space to be comfortable. “What’re you doing up here?”

“Just thought I’d come visit. Everyone’s just chilling out right now and it seemed sorta nice to join in on, but you seemed a little too chill there.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Lost in thought.”

“You sure?”

“You wanna elaborate?” She says in a very flat voice.

“I mean, you’ve been a little out of it all the time recently and I’m not really sure why.”

“Of course,” she groans, scrubbing at her face. “Why would you think anything else?”

“Uh,” he says, and doesn’t add on.

“Sorry. Just, everyone’s been saying the same stuff and It’s kinda tiring. Yeah, I know I’m spacey right now. I’m dealing with stuff with my meds and it’s messing stuff up.”

“I mean, I can’t relate to having ADHD but… I can listen if you want?”

She opens her mouth the shut it down but then pauses. She hasn’t actually gotten any advice, and maybe that’s what she needs.

“You sure?”

“Wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”

She feels a little shifty. It was always a big mistake talking about skipping her meds because it’s important to take them and not skip, but Duck isn’t her dad and can’t make her do anything, so it’ll probably be fine.

“I, I know what you’re gonna tell me, but I haven’t really been taking them all that much.”

“Aren’t those kinda medications meant to be taken regularly or they fuck you up?” Duck asks, and Aubrey snorts.

“Yeah, case in point.” She fists her hands together and twists them. “I’m running out and I’ve been saving them for really bad days, but really bad days are getting way more common because I’m not taking them right so they’re getting bumped to super bad days, and how am I even supposed to categorize that when I know I’ll need it for aa hunt and every other day isn’t worth it?”

“Do you need another prescription?” Duck’s looking at her with his head tilted and Aubrey shrugs her shoulders.

“At this point probably, but that’s not even hard. I just need to go to a doctor and ask them to get me a new script and I’m good. I’ve been on it for like ever and it’s not like they can’t grab my file from my hometown.”

“So the problem is…?”

“I’m on my dad’s insurance and I don’t want him finding out where I’m at.”

That just sort of sits in the air between them, Aubrey staring at the floor and twisting her hands. She looks over at Duck and finds him looking at her with this mix of worry and resigned familiarity, and she realizes the implications of what she just said.

“Oh— oh no, not like, no. He’s fine. He’s an okay dad. I didn’t mean… no. I just haven’t… I haven’t talked to him in a really long time and he hasn’t tried over the years, but maybe once he figures out I’m in Kepler for an extended amount of time, he’ll try to come find me.”

Duck still looks a little cautious about the whole situation and she slumps, pressing her face into her legs.

“Really, my parents were great. I mean, they weren’t the biggest fans of my career being magic, but that was about it for unsupportive. I just… I left right after my mom died and my dad got left all alone and then I stopped answering his calls and eventually he stopped calling and I… I know he deserves to know where I’m at and that I’m alive and okay, but it’s dangerous for him here, and for everyone at the Lodge, and probably me if he came in the middle of a hunt and I had to keep making sure my dad didn’t get killed by a monster.”

“Alright,” Duck says, and he’s quiet. “So your dad isn’t actually the problem, you’re just scared of what could happen if you actually did something healthy for yourself.”

“Hey, that’s twisting my words into something I deffo didn’t say. I know taking my medication as prescribed is the healthiest, but I don’t want my dad getting killed.”

“Aubrey, you already got admitted to the nearest hospital to here at the end of the summer.”

“Exactly! He definitely got the bill for that, and if he finds out I’ve started filling my Focalin here in Kepler he’ll know exactly where I’m at! The hospital could’ve been a fluke while passing through, but filling medications multiple times isn’t.”

Duck’s quiet for a while, and Aubrey shifts so her face is towards him, the side of her head still squished against her leggings.

“Me and my parents don’t talk for way different reasons than you and your dad,” he says eventually. “That’s a whole ass separate situation that I’m not getting into. But I’ve thought a lot about why I don’t want to see them. You said it yourself that your parents were pretty alright in terms of parenting, so why do you really not want to see your dad?”

She starts to object, but finds that she can’t. He’s right, obviously. She’s scared of him dying, of course, but that’s not what’s tugging at her stomach.

“I fucked up,” she says quietly. “I left him all alone and barely talked to him after mom died, and I mean right after mom died. I left the next day.”

Duck sucks in a breath of air and she closes her eyes, grimacing. “I couldn’t deal with everything and I was already planning on leaving, so I just left. And… and if he knows where I am, maybe he’ll get tired of this radio silence I’ve been giving him for the past year and a half and actually come see me. Or he’ll want me to come home. Or actually talk to him about mom and that big fucking mess.”

Her eyes are watery, because Duck’s here and she almost killed him the same way she killed her mom. “And then I’d have to explain all the magic and that I’m pretty sure it’s the magic that killed mom because there was a house fire after I knocked myself out. A-And I don’t know if I can tell my dad that I killed my mom. And I don’t know if I can see him and have things be okay after leaving like that.”

There’s some shuffling of fabric, then a pause, and then Duck’s hand is on her back, rubbing unsure circles between her shoulders. She shifts her face back into her legs and squeezes her eyes and mouth shut tight.

“That’s, uh, that’s a whole lot. Jeezy petes. You’ve had a whole helluva lot on your plate recently.”

“Guess so,” she mumbles, not moving even a little bit. Duck really never seems like he knows how to comfort anyone, but he’s alright at listening.

“I think,” he says, and then he hums, recollecting his thoughts. “Maybe, uh, maybe you fill it, your prescription. You have a website, with booking information, and you give information on it about where you’re planning on being and where you’ve been. If your dad wanted to come accost you about your relationship and your mom, he would have.”

She hums, blinking her eyes into the dark of her leggings.

“So, if you fill this, and then you get a refill or whatever, he’ll know where you’re at, but he’s known where you’re at. Honestly it probably just relieve him that you’re alright and somewhere semi stable enough to fill medications at.”

Duck’s hand stops moving and Aubrey lifts her head, face probably looking a little miserable.

“And, if he does end up coming down, we can deal with it. You know you don’t gotta deal with it alone, right? You got a whole Lodge full’a aliens that would help you out in an instant, not to mention your fellow guard members.”

“Yeah?” she asks quietly.

“Of course. You think I’m gonna let you deal with your real scary shit all by yourself? Fuck that.”

She snorts out a laugh and smiles. It feels sad, but it feels good. “Okay.”

“Okay, you’re gonna get your necessary medication filled?”

“Okay, I’m gonna get my necessary medication filled. I gotta go to the doctor first.”

“So go. You need a rec? There’s only like one doctor in Kepler, but there’s a real good one in the town just a few miles south of here.”

“Sure,” she says, grabbing her phone and opening her notes. “Recommend away.”

Aubrey writes down Duck’s doctor’s name and the town and commits to calling them later and setting up an appointment. Duck sits back in the couch, crossing his arms.

“You okay?” She asks him.

“This gig is gonna be the death of me. Making friends with magic fire girls? Never thought that would happen.”

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad. You got to use your special Duck advice giving skills. They’re pretty good, if I have to say.”

“You think?”

“Of course! I’d still be stressing big time over this if they weren’t.”

He smiles softly and looks up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I guess they’re alright.”

Aubrey still has to make the appointment, and she should probably take a pill sometime today, but for now she’s content on the couch with her friend. Duck, as loathe as he is to get too close to people, seems to do it pretty easily. Aubrey is no exception.

“Thanks,” she says quietly. “You listen really well.”

“My pleasure,” he says.

She’s ready, she thinks, to face this head on. Maybe not right away, and definitely not alone, but she won’t have to, and she’ll be clear headed, or close to it. All that’s left to do is actually do.

She thinks she can manage that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!!  
> i haven't written an aubrey fic in the longest, so here we are! i love aubrey little with my whole heart and i think that doesn't get portrayed enough  
> hope ya'll laiked this one, and please comment if you did!


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